Wondrous Words Wednesday – August 5, 2009

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Kathy at Bermudaonion. The idea is for bloggers to post about the unfamiliar words they have encountered in their reading the past week. Click over to read other book bloggers’ Wondrous Words, and leave a link to your post of some Wondrous Words of your own.

From Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell:

perron: an outdoor stairway leading up to a building entrance

‘They call that a perron, I believe, don’t they?’ she asked.

badinage: playful repartee

He was a widower, and likely to remain so; his domestic affections were centred on little Molly, but even to her, in their most private moments, he did not give way to much expression of his feelings; his most caressing appellation for her was ‘Goosey,’ and he took a pleasure in bewildering her infant mind with his badinage.

termagant: an overbearing or nagging woman

Though her papa laughed at her, quizzed her, joked at her, in a way which the Miss Brownings called ‘really cruel’ to each other when they were quite alone, Molly took her little griefs and pleasures, and poured them into her papa’s ears, sooner even than into Betty’s – that kind-hearted termagant.

From The Dangerous Days of Daniel X by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge:

sempiternal: of never-ending duration

“I had something a little more sempiternal and epic in mind,” I said as I put my fingers to my mouth and whistled.

From Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant:

greensickness: chlorosis: an iron-deficiency anemia especially of adolescent girls that may impart a greenish tint to the skin